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Anti-bullying strategies left to individual school boards (with video)

Premier Christy Clark took to social media with an emotional anti-bullying message after a 15-year old girl took her life.

After two high-profile teen suicides in Ontario last year, that province’s education ministry enacted tough, new legislation to address bullying.

Mitchell Wilson, an 11-year-old from Pickering, and 15-year-old Jamie Hubley from Ottawa both took their own lives in 2011 after enduring physical and verbal attacks.

This spring, the Ontario government enacted the Accepting Schools Act, which specifically addresses cyber-bullying, requires school boards to offer counselling and anger management courses, and prescribes other preventive measures. It also allows principals to expel students for acts of bullying.

“For the first time in Ontario, we have recognized cyber-bullying in legislation because we know bullying doesn’t stop outside the school walls,” said Ontario’s education minister Laurel Broten on Friday. Broten also offered condolences to the family of Port Coquitlam teenager Amanda Todd, who killed herself this week after years of bullying.

Todd, 15, was found dead in her home on Wednesday. She had uploaded a video to YouTube five weeks ago detailing how she had been shunned at school, beaten up and taunted online.

Ironically, her death prompted an international outpouring of sympathy on the same social media sites that had been her torment.

In B.C., the education ministry introduced the Erase Bullying strategy in June, and dedicated $2 million to train educators and others to recognize and address threats.

Other elements of the strategy — like a smartphone app, stronger codes of conduct, a provincial advisory committee, and formal protocols — are still in development.

The strategy doesn’t expressly deal with cyber-bullying, but schools do with their own codes of conduct. Those are created in accordance with the district school boards’ policies, which is required by provincial law.

There is no one method of dealing with bullying, but schools along with parents can provide counselling, issue suspensions or involve police.

Restorative approaches are increasingly being recognized as a way to restore relationships, said Cindi Seddon, principal of Summit middle school in Coquitlam and the author of two anti-bullying books. She noted cyber-bullying is the most difficult to address.

“Punishment doesn’t work in terms of new learning,” Seddon said. “Mostly we want kids to learn — if they’ve done harm — to understand the harm they’ve done and face the person they’ve harmed and have a conversation with a skilled facilitator.”

Her school is increasingly using a restorative approach and has someone on staff to handle appropriate cases.

That can help repair friendships rather than deepening animosity among students, said Jennifer Shapka, a University of B.C. professor in the faculties of education and counselling psychology.

Cyber-bullying is already more insidious than other forms of bullying because it follows students to their homes. Switching schools or shutting off mobile devices might seem reasonable to parents, but not to students themselves, Shapka said. Adolescents use the Internet to socialize, and simply deleting Facebook could cut off their social life.

“It’s a major extension of their social world, one that’s connected 24/7 if they have a mobile device,” she said.

That’s why many school districts in B.C. have invited Jesse Miller to give workshops on social media responsibility to students. He encourages students to practice “digital citizenship,” which means acting online the same way they would in person, to stop cyber-bullying before it starts.

“The school’s job isn’t to police the Internet 24 hours a day,” said Miller, who has spoken to more than 200,000 students across Canada. “A lot of kids act surprised they’re being brought to the principal’s office for a Facebook issue. They don’t realize it’s breaking the rules or causing a controversy in real life.”

Bullying extends beyond the schoolyard, agreed Irena Pochop, spokeswoman for Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows school district. Todd was formerly a student in the district, but the specific school has not been released.

One of the schools Todd attended holds assemblies and seminars regularly on bullying and social media, and provides phone numbers for school administrators if there’s a crisis.

“We try to bring the attention to the students, but to parents as well because that’s just as important. Social media activity happens when the students are at home.”

Last year, a cyber-bullying forum was held for all school communities in the district.

“We have over 5,000 kids in our secondary schools. We had 60 parents show up,” Pochop said. “This is a school problem but a community issue.”

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